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Transformations
Not long ago, I had a good dog. He was my best friend. He was my emotional bedrock. In a time when all the sand seems to be shifting beneath my feet, he was the one living thing that I could count on. And then I went to dinner. And when I got back home,…
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%&#@*^% Opinion Polls
As election day drew near and my stress level increased, I took a great deal of comfort from visiting the fivethirtyeight.com website. This is considered the poll of polls. Nate Silver combines a wide spectrum of sources to reach kind of an aggregate on his website. And right up to the big day, he predicted…
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You Matter
I was talking to a dear friend recently, and at the age of 67, he feels he’s pretty much done everything he planned to do in his life, and now he’s just “hanging around, waiting.” This brought tears to my eyes. To think of this wonderful man having absolutely no clue, no clue how much…
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On Staying Put
The worst mistake I’ve ever made was staying for decades in a situation that made me unhappy. I now look back on those years with sadness and wonder what I could have achieved if I only had the courage to listen to my gut. But no. I played it safe. I didn’t want to hurt…
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Timing
For the first time in my life I have a job with a decent retirement plan. Unfortunately, I didn’t get the job until age 50, so I’m still going to have to work until I drop dead. Timing. It’s all about timing. I think about timing quite a bit. Some people are lucky enough to…
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“American Blogger Killed”
When I read that headline the other day, my blood ran cold. Because, hey, I’m an American Blogger, so I take stuff like this personally. (Okay, so my notoriety isn’t that overwhelming, but it still strikes a chord.) According to the Reuters article, the blogger in question, Avijit Roy, was based in Bangladesh, which, let’s…
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Human Signposts
As you walk your path in life, you’ll come across many intersections and forks in the road, and you’ll have to make decisions. Sometimes you won’t even know you’re at a crossroad until you look back and realize you’ve negotiated your way through it, or discover to your horror that you’ve gotten off track and…
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Human Force Fields
Recently, an employee with a company closely related to mine retired and I kid you not, we all felt as if we’d taken off a shoe that was two sizes too small. The man was toxic, hostile, anal, and completely evil. I’ve never in my life met anyone who was so universally disliked. The day…
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Why Do We Need Politicians Anymore?
The other day my dog jumped on me while I was in the middle of REM sleep. It felt like someone dropped a canned ham on me from a two story building. In retrospect perhaps it was a good thing, because it brought something to my conscious mind that had apparently been percolating in my…